Intel 300 series chipsets to be completely phased out by 2022

As of January 4, 2021, Intel has started phasing out its 300 series chipsets. The company recently released a Product change notification detailing the end-of-life schedule of its chipsets supporting Intel’s 8th and 9th generation processors, and by the end of January 2022, chipsets will be silicon history. The 2020 release of Intel’s 10th generation processors and 400-series chipsets already heralded the retirement of the 300-series, but it’s now official.

The last date anyone can order 300 series motherboards is July 23, 2021, with the final shipping date being January 28, 2022. This applies to the Z390, Z370, H370 consumer desktop chipsets. , B365, B360, H310C and H310D, and the QMS380 consumer mobile chipset, based on an older motherboard socket, the LGA 1151. (The Q370 chipset was not listed, but it is a professional chipset supporting vPro versions of 8th and 9th generation Intel processors.)

From a production point of view, this makes sense. Intel and other tech companies are struggling to get the production capacities they need to meet demand. Processors, GPUs, and other components have been or still are affected – and with Intel catching up with AMD by supporting PCIe 4.0, I can see why it wants to focus on further improvements and be more forward-thinking in its approach. of production. The 400 series chipsets are based on the new LGA 1200 socket, which supports the PCIe 4.0 standard that Intel plans to integrate into its 11th generation desktop processors.

But that complicates things for consumers who want to stick with Intel. I have wrote about it before, but chipset compatibility is one of the biggest things AMD has on Intel at the moment. Depending on the processor, AMD (non APU) processors run on multiple generations of motherboards. The Ryzen 2000 series works with 300, 400 and 500 series chipsets, and the Ryzen 3000 and The 5000 series works with 400 and 500 series chipsets. It should also be noted that AMD Ryzen 3000 series APUs work with 300, 400 and 500 series chipsets.

Some previous rumors have indicated that AMD released a 600 series chipset before the end of 2020, but that obviously didn’t happen – and I’ll be surprised if AMD announces a new chipset at CES. The 500 series motherboards support PCIe 4.0 and integrate AMD Smart Access (SAM) memory at the BIOS level to work with the new Radeon graphics cards. (However, SAM is not owned by AMD. Nvidia is currently working on a Similar update to its 30 series RTX cards.)

On a hardware level, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for AMD to launch a new chipset just yet. AMD has kept its promise to support the AM4 socket until 2020, and it looks like it will continue to do so until 2021, as motherboard makers are still rolling out BIOS updates for them. 400 series motherboards to work with 5000 series processors. Future versions of the AMD chipset might have an entirely new socket, which wouldn’t be so bad considering the number of processor generations left on the AM4 – and it has not announced any end-of-life plans for its chipsets.

In contrast, Intel released a new chipset and / or socket every one or two generations. In the case of 7th and 8th gen processors, the company released an update to its LGA 1151 socket that made version 2 incompatible with 7th and 6th gen processors, so anyone upgrading to a Core i-8000, whatever the need at the time to get a new motherboard. That was towards the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, depending on when exactly each processor came out.

In 2020, Intel released Socket 1200 which would require anyone interested in upgrading to a 9th generation or earlier processor to purchase a new motherboard. Not just that, Intel discontinued its 8th generation processors in June 2020. And although AMD has discontinued its Ryzen 1000 and Ryzen 2000 at this point (or rather I guess it has discontinued the 2000 series since there is no longer an option to buy the one of these processors direct from AMD on their website), if you still have one of these chips, you can easily find a motherboard that will work with them.

Intel’s processors, sockets and chipsets haven’t been passed down from generation to generation in the same way AMD designed its products – and now that Intel has started the EOL process for its 300 series chipsets. , consumers and laptop makers will be forced to adopt, at a minimum, 10th gen Intel processors by July 2021, which means beautiful, low-budget laptops like Acer Nitro 5 with a 9th generation processor may soon be more difficult to find or become virtually non-existent. Intel hasn’t released any EOL plans for its 9th gen processors, or even its LGA 1151 socket, but the 300 series chipsets were the last to have socket 1151 – and socket 1151 is required for a 9th processor. generation. When you associate the end of the 300 series with the discontinuation of 8th gen Intel processors … this could be the last step before Intel decides to permanently phase out its socket 1151 and 9th gen processors.

If you are a PC tinkerer, planning to upgrade your PC has just gotten a bit more difficult. At this point, if you’re still trying to find a 9th gen processor, it’s probably best to wait until after CES at least, when Intel is likely to reveal more information about its 11th gen processors.